Race relations Archives - Appalachian History

Knoxville’s Red Summer of 1919

Knoxville, TN up till the ‘Red Summer’ of 1919 had always prided itself as a model southern city when it came to race relations.

In June 1929, First Lady Louann Hoover refused to invite black Congressman Oscar De Priest’s wife to the White House for tea with others.

Mrs. Lillian Ballew Gentry, b. 1927 in Madison County, KY; April 1, 1992 interview conducted by A.G. Dunston, Eastern Kentucky University.

Soon after the guilty verdicts, the NAACP and the International Labor Defense came to the defense of the “Scottsboro Boys.”

Garet Mathews, white, turned his back on a black ‘friend’ in high school when the friend counted on him. That experience shaped his outlook.

Developed by Thunderbolthost